Chapter 18 THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AND THE SOVIET …



Chapter 18 THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AND THE SOVIET UNION

Section 91 "Backgrounds"

BY THE WAY Alexander II was assassinated by a Polish student named Hrieniewicki.

1. What reforms had been introduced in Russia under Alexander II? What policies did Alexander III pursue? With what results?

2. How did industrialization in the closing decades of the 19th century affect a) the wage-earning class b) the capitalist class?

3. What special features characterized land ownership and the agrarian economy in Russia?

4. How did the Social Revolutionary party differ in attitudes and program from the Social Democratic Labor party? (Another opportunity to make it clear through a chart. Graphics are good!)

5. Describe Lenin's personality and background. How would you evaluate his contributions to Marxism? What special factors in the Russian background affected his conception of a revolutionary party and of revolution?

6. Summarize the similarities and differences between the French and Russian Revolutions in a chart. Consider using Brinton’s model.

Russia after 1881: Reaction and Progress

ID: Alexander III, the People's Will, proletariat, Constitutional Democratic party (Cadets), mir, zemstvos, kulaks, "land hunger," pogroms, Black Hundreds, Pobedonoststev.

1. How did Alexander III respond to his father's assassination?

2. In what ways was Russia becoming more European in the latter part of the 19th century?

3. Conditions of the growing Russian proletariat?

4. Weaknesses of the business and capitalist class?

5. Conditions of the peasants since Emancipation?

The Emergence of Revolutionary Parties

ID: "populists," Plekhanov and Axelrod, Social Revolutionary Party, Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky

1. What were the two traditional sources of revolutionary disturbances in Russia?

2. Socio-economic divisions among the rural classes?

3. Objections of populists to Marxist theory?

4. Personality of Lenin?

5. What were the differences between the Social Democratic Labor Party and the Social Revolutionary Party?

Split in the Social Democrats: Bolsheviks and Mensheviks

ID:

1. What tactics did Lenin use to cause the split?

2. What were the ideological differences between the B.'s and the M.'s?

3. What Marxist ideas did Lenin expand upon?

4. Consider what RRP says on p. 734 and on pp. 740-741 and assess Lenin's role as a cause of the Russian Revolution.

Chapter 18, Section 92 "The Revolution of 1905"

1. What signs of dissatisfaction could be discerned in Russia at the opening of the 20th century? Of what significance was the war with Japan?

2. Describe the background and nature of the Revolution of 1905. What precipitated the revolution? With what consequences?

3. What appears to be the chief result of the Revolution of 1905? What actually was the result?

4. Explain the objectives and the accomplishments of Stolypin. What sources of discontent persisted in the countryside despite his reforms?

5. In what direction did Russia seem to be moving by 1914?

Background and Revolutionary Events

ID: Nicholas II, Plehve, Father Gapon, "Bloody Sunday," soviets, October Manifesto

1. Personality of Nicholas II?

2. Grievances of the peasants?

3. How did Plehve and his pals miscalculate the repercussions of the war with Japan?

4. Role of Father Gapon? What events led up to "Bloody Sunday?"

5. What was the Tsar's response and what motivated it?

The Results of 1905: The Duma

ID:

1. What constituted the "right" and the "left" opposition to the new Duma?

2. Short unhappy history of the first Duma? Who got to vote? For whom? What happened to cause it to be dissolved?

3. Second Duma? Third Duma? Fourth Duma? See a pattern?

The Stolypin Reforms

ID: Peter Stolypin

1. What were Stolypin's land reforms? How did they affect the development of both the kulak class and the proletariat?

2. Results?

3. Why did the revolutionaries object to Stolypin's reforms? Why did the "reactionary secret police" also object?

4. What does RRP imply was the trigger for the Revolution?

Chapter 18, Section 93 "The Revolution of 1917"

1. Why did dissatisfaction with the wartime tsarist regime emerge?

2. How was the crisis of March 1917 precipitated? What revolutionary events followed?

3. Describe the program of the Provisional Government and the obstacles it faced.

4. Explain the appeal of Lenin's program. Under what circumstances did the Bolsheviks seize power? Describe the new machinery of government.

5. What action did Lenin take with respect to the war? Why did he accept the Brest-Litovsk treaty?

6. In what sense was "war Communism" a "mixture of principle and expediency"? How did these policies lead to trouble with the peasants?

7. Which groups resisted the new regime in the civil war? What role did the Allied governments play? What factors helped the Bolsheviks to triumph?

End of the Tsardom: The Revolution of March 1917

ITsarina Alexandra, hemophilia, Rasputin, Provisional Government, Prince Lvov, Alexander Kerensky

1. Why were all the different groups and factions in Russia unwilling to cooperate with the government in the prosecution of the war?

2. Which group precipitated the crisis and with which grievance?

3. Role of the Petrograd Soviet? Compare to role of Paris Commune of 1792.

4. Events leading up to abdication of the Tsar? What do you think would have happened if his brother had accepted the throne?

The Bolshevik Revolution: November 1917

ID: "peace, land, and bread," Zinoviev, Kamenov, Order No. 1, Kerensky, Prince Lvov, General Kornilov, Central Committee, Council of People's Commissars, dictatorship of the proletariat, "class rule," "just democratic peace," "abolished all landlord property" Constituent Assembly

1. What were the initial actions of the Provisional government? What was their biggest mistake? Any idea why they made it?

2. How did Kerensky get appointed head of the PG and why could he not form an effective government?

3. What were Lenin's four points?

4. What steps did the Bolsheviks take to seize power?

5. How did the Bolsheviks "deal" with the Constituent Assembly?

Section 93

The New Regime: The Civil War, 1918-1922

ID: treaty of Brest-Litovsk, All-Russian Commission of Struggle Against Counterrevolution, Speculation, and Sabotage aka Cheka/OGPU/NKVD/MVD/KGB, Red Army, White Army, Red Terror, Kronstadt uprising

1. Why was Lenin willing to give up so much land to the Germans?

2. Problems with the food supply? Compare to the French Revolution?

3. Among Russians, who was resisting the Revolution and why?

4. Allied response to the Revolution?

5. Role of Trotsky in the success of the Red Army?

6. Describe the Red Terror and compare it to the Reign of Terror.

Chapter 18, Section 94 "The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics"

1. What link was there between the party and the government in the Soviet Union? How were decisions arrived at in the party? In what sense did the party tend to lose its original character?

Government: The Nationalities and Federalism

ID:

1. How had the problem of nationalism manifested itself in Russian Empire and how had the Empire tried to solve it?

2. How did the problem of nationalism manifest itself in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and what did the leaders do to solve it?

3. What were the original four SSR's and what areas did they comprise?

Government: State and Party

ID: Constitutions of 1924 and 1936, Central Committee, Politburo aka Presidium,

1. What is meant by the "principle of parallelism?"

2. Compare suffrage laws in the Constitutions of 1924 and 1936.

3. Describe the organization of the Communist Party.

The New Economic Policy, 1921-1927

ID: New Economic Policy aka NEP,

1. What were the conditions leading to the NEP?

2. Results of the NEP?

Social and Cultural Changes after the Revolution

ID: “toilers” Sergei Eisenstein, Potemkin, Alexander Nevsky, Vladimir Mayakovsky, “Ode to Revolution,” socialist realism

1. In what ways did the Revolution change women’s rights and family life? How enduring were these changes?

2. What were some of the artistic innovations of this period? How enduring were these changes?

3. Explain “socialist realism.”

Stalin and Trotsky

ID: "permanent revolution," “socialism in one country”

1. Trotsky's ideology?

2. Stalin's history? His special talents?

Chapter 18, Section 95 "Stalin: The Five-Year Plans and the Purges"

1. What ideas and precedents contributed to the concept of economic planning?

2. How would you evaluate the effects of the Five-Year plans on Soviet society? To what extent was economic equality realized or sought? What kind of competition persisted?

Economic Planning

ID: First Five-Year Plan, Second Five-Year Plan, Third Five-Year Plan, Gosplan

1. Why does RRP say that it took the Bolsheviks so long to come up with a plan?

2. Engels's justification for a national plan?

3. Two goals of the First Five-Year Plan?

4. How was the Russian economy both a planned and a command economy?

5. Why did the Russians need an agricultural revolution to achieve their goal of an industrial revolution?

The Collectivization of Agriculture

ID:

1. Social/economic goals of the collectivization process?

2. Who were the immediate "losers" in the process of collectivization? Results of these "agricultural disorders?"

3. Advantages of collective cultivation for the central government?

4. Social/economic costs to the peasants?

The Growth of Industry

ID:

1. Describe the changes in the Russian economy between 1928 and 1938? Use as many specific figures as you can.

2. How did Asian Russia change during the Five-Year Plans?

3. What is the significance of low paper production in the USSR?

Social Costs and Social Effects of the Plans

ID: Stakhanov, "labor heroes," speed-up,

1. Make a list of the economic benefits and harms of the system.

2. Make a list of the social benefits and harms of the system.

The Purge Trials of the 1930's

ID: Kirov, Bukharin, "rightists," Great Terror of 1934-1938,

1. Stalin's motives?

2. Do you agree with RRP that if the Tsar had "purged" the Bolsheviks as they purged each other that there would have been no November Revolution?

3. Political consequences of the Purges?

Chapter 18, Section 96 "The International Impact of Communism, 1919-1939"

1. How was international socialism affected by a) the First World War and b) by the Russian Revolution?

2. What events led to the founding of the Third International? What role did the Russian party play in its creation and operation?

3. Explain the stages through which the Comintern passed in the years following its inception

Socialism and the First World War

ID: revisionism, "opportunism," Zimmerwald program, Spartacist movement, Third/Communist International, Comintern,

1. What were the two groups of European socialists, who was in each one and what did they stand for?

The Founding of the Third International

ID: Lenin's Twenty-One Points,

1. Events leading up to 3rd International?

2. Who supported it, and what were their ideologies?

3. What were some of Lenin's 21 Points?

4. How did the USSR exert its greatest influence "by the very fact that it existed?"

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download